Irreligion in Albania
Irreligion, atheism and agnosticism are present among Albanians (see religion in Albania), along with the predominant faiths of Islam and Christianity.
[19] Vaso Pasha's famous poem O moj Shqypni told Albanians to "swear an oath not to mind [lit.
[19] Albanian national revivalists in the 19th century such as Faik Konica, Jani Vreto and Zef Jubani were often anti-clerical in rhetoric (Konica said in 1897: "Every faith religion makes me puke", or Albanian: Më vjen për të vjellur nga çdo fe)[20] but the first advocate of atheism in modern Albania is thought to have been Ismet Toto, a publicist and revolutionary[3] whose 1934 anti-religious polemic, Grindje me Klerin ("Quarrel with the clergy "), was one of the first known works advocating against the practice of religion itself in the Albanian language.
[23] It noted his reign, Ahmet Zogu embraced the renaissance ideals of unity, areligiosity and European modernity, and turned them into the very ideology of the state.
[8] The beginning of anti-religious policies implemented by the Communist Party of Albania was in August 1946, with the Agrarian Reform Law which nationalized most of the property of religious institutions, restricted the activity of religious institutions, and preceded the persecution of many clergy and believers and the expulsion of all foreign Catholic priests.
[5] A major center for anti-religious propaganda was the National Museum of Atheism (Albanian: Muzeu Ateist) in Shkodër, the city viewed by the government as the most religiously conservative.
[8][31] After the death of Enver Hoxha in 1985, his successor, Ramiz Alia, adopted a more tolerant stance toward religious practice, calling it as "a personal and family matter."
Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, visited Tirana in 1989, where she was received by the foreign minister and by Hoxha's widow.
[32][33] In 2014, following a visit by Pope Francis to Albania, some intellectuals criticized what they perceived as negative rhetoric aimed at atheists, which increasingly linked atheism to "communist crimes" and spoke of atheism as "deficient", leading to complaints that the revival of an anti-atheist "taboo",[18] among other issues.
[10] The final results were nevertheless criticized by numerous communities as well as international organizations such as the Council of Europe, and news media noted concerns that there were reports where workers filled out the religion question without actually asking the participants, and that they used pencils which wasn't allowed, possibly leading to incorrect tallies; in the religious dimension, both the Orthodox and the Bektashis claimed they were vastly underrepresented.
In Albania, religious identity is typically defined by attribution, typically via one's familial religious background, rather than actual adherence,[15][16] and regardless of an individual's religiosity or lack thereof, it can still be socially significant, as it is occasionally linked to historical socioeconomic and cultural factors in some contexts.
[77] Some Albanian intellectuals have complained about the revival of a "taboo" against atheism as seen in the rhetoric surrounding the 2014 visit of the Pope to the country where atheism was linked to "communist crimes" and seen as "deficient", and that the new Albanian constitution claims trust in God as a "universal" value despite the significant number of people who don't believe in God in the country.
[34] Prime Minister Edi Rama (himself of Catholic and Orthodox extraction with a Muslim wife[78] and having expressed doubt about the existence of God[79]) has asserted that Albania's traditional religious harmony, traditionally defined as being between the four main faiths of Sunni Islam, Orthodox Christianity, Bektashi Islam and Roman Catholic Christianity, should also include the irreligious.
